Comment by akolbe

The website reporting this is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Tone

But the story is perfectly real: the link to the community discussion on Wikipedia checks out.

Chinese state media do enjoy reporting – often intelligently – on Wikipedia's foibles (I've been quoted by them a number of times). And I have sometimes wished Western media were equally diligent about digging up stories like this, rather than always reflexively singing Wikipedia's praises. Wikipedia would actually profit from the scrutiny, as I and some Signpost colleagues pointed out at the 2015 WikiConference:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journalism_and_the_o...

(The Signpost is the English Wikipedia's community newspaper, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost )

But it is also clear that this Sixth Tone article is designed to support a political narrative. I would not completely exclude the possibility that it was a state-sponsored effort. The apology the user posted (in Chinese) on the English Wikipedia (someone linked it below) does read quite wooden (I had DeepL translate it). On the other hand, this may simply reflect cultural differences.